


Incompetent Plumbers and Other Dilemmas

by etothey



Category: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Ruo Lives, Happy Ending, LARPing, Multi, Shuos Academy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:09:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28179633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etothey/pseuds/etothey
Summary: When Cadet Vestenya Ruo is arrested for heresy, Jedao plots to rescue him.
Relationships: Garach Jedao Shkan/Lirov Yeren/Vestenya Ruo
Comments: 15
Kudos: 27
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Incompetent Plumbers and Other Dilemmas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redsixwing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redsixwing/gifts).



Jedao didn't stir when Yeren crept out of bed and shrugged on her robe of violet silk. She always did that after sex: she was one of those people who had to check her messages and pet forum flamewars even in the middle of the night. Not as if Jedao minded. This view of her, backlit by her desk lamp, was very fine. He could see her silhouetted form through the robe, which might or might not have been an intended side-effect. Ruo had given it to her as a joke when he and Jedao started dating her.

Jedao was in the process of drifting back into a pleasant sleep, hoping for the kind of erotic dreams that would lead to one more round of morning sex before Yeren kicked him out so they could get to classes on time, when he heard her indrawn breath. Which, fine, sometimes she saw something weird or shocking, like that time a third-year had been framed putting a gelatin fox's head in the commandant's office. ("I love a good aspic," Jedao had remarked, at which Yeren had thrown a pillow at him.)

But this was different. He opened his eyes, observed her tension. She was upset.

Jedao sat upright in one practiced motion--field exercises were good for _something_ \--and pulled on his clothes. "What's the matter?" he asked.

"It's Ruo," Yeren said. She was staring at her tablet screen, shaking.

Jedao came up behind her and began rubbing her shoulders. Then he saw what troubled her. She'd hacked into Security. The video recording showed their lover Ruo being rousted out of bed at three in the morning and being hauled off.

Yeren sighed and leaned her head back against his chest. "Jedao, I went snooping because I keep alerts on the two of you in case of trouble, and found _this_."

Jedao didn't comment on this. It was what he would have done, in her place. The only reason he didn't was because she could still hack circles around him.

"So what's the trouble?" he asked, squinting at the video loop. It wasn't especially informative. The Shuos security goons could have been objecting to Ruo because he had stolen something, or because he had mouthed off to the wrong person, or because they didn't like his ponytail.

But it had to be serious if Yeren, ordinarily level-headed, was this concerned.

"He's been charged with heresy," Yeren said. She was still trembling.

Jedao leaned down and folded her in his arms. He knew how hard this was hitting her. Not just because he could _feel_ her distress, like a low-grade thrum in his heart, but because he knew about her family history. (She hadn't told him, but in true fox fashion he'd found out anyway, and in true fox fashion she had let him.) Her favorite aunt had been found guilty of heresy. It was a sensitive subject for her.

That it was a sensitive subject for damn near everyone in the heptarchate hadn't escaped his notice.

Right now, though, he had a more immediate concern. "Ruo's not going to be in trouble," Jedao said. He let go of Yeren and dragged his fingers through his hair in an attempt to comb it, then gave it up and pulled on his shoes and jacket as well.

Yeren's eyes narrowed. "You're not going to--"

"Damn straight I'm breaking him out of there," Jedao said. "What kind of friend would I be if I didn't?"

"You'll get caught. A heresy charge isn't--"

Jedao kissed her on the side of the mouth to interrupt her. She returned the kiss, looking nonplussed. "They won't catch me," he said, "because my handler is the best hacker in the Academy."

Yeren made a small half-amused, half-pained moue. "Like we both don't know the only reason you're sleeping with me is so you can learn all my tricks."

There were several things he could have said to that. Instead, Jedao kissed her again. "I'm dating you," he said, "because you are one of the few damn people on this campus with a conscience. Now hook me up with one of your transceivers and let's get to work."

*

Out of an abundance of caution, Jedao and Yeren staged a crass, stupid, pointless fight over the fact (true) that he kept squeezing her toothpaste tube in the middle instead of at the end. Granted, she could have looped the campus surveillance to make it appear that he was still sleeping in her room, or engaged in more exciting gyrations for the benefit of any humans checking in on them, but the more strategically she used her hacking abilities, the less attention she would draw.

On his way out, Jedao picked the lock of the janitor's closet in Yeren's dorm and liberated a set of work tools. He'd need them as props, and besides, who knew if the tools would come in handy? He did take the precaution of opening up the case to check that the contents were, in fact, janitor's tools instead of someone's secret stash of drugs or explosives.

The night air was brisk. He could see the Citadel of Eyes, in orbit above the Academy, shining in the cloud-veiled sky, indistinguishable from one of the system's inner planets to the naked eye. Jedao was hardly the only cadet abroad at this hour. He made a point of weaving in a drunken fashion, not that that would fool his smarter classmates.

"I yanked Ruo's location from Administration's servers," Yeren's voice said tinnily in his ear. "Specifically, he's being held in Cloister Three."

Jedao used to find the Academy's name for its holding cells grimly amusing. Funny how even that vestige of black humor evaporated when it was one of his own friends in there. He had to make sure he got Ruo out _and_ changed the record _and_ pinned the blame on something else.

This would have been easier if he could use some _one_ as the scapegoat. But then some other poor sod would end up talking to a posse of Rahal or worse, the campus's Vidona office. What kind of person would that make him?

Instead of heading directly to Cloister Three, Jedao detoured toward one of the muckier parts of campus. "I need a blackout," he said to Yeren.

Yeren was prepared for this. "How long?"

"About thirty seconds, and then you're going to have to loop the footage in the sewers. I just hope there aren't people in there playing Castles & Conspiracies or some other live-action roleplaying game."

He heard the tip-tapping of her fingers as they flew over the tablet's pull-out keyboard, then: "Done. Go now."

Jedao made one more check of his surroundings--killing the _video_ surveillance wouldn't do him a damn bit of good if he got spotted by _people_ \--then pried open the sewer grate. This was easier than it should have been, mainly because he knew that one of his classmates had disabled the safeguards, and the commandant permitted it.

He climbed down into the semi-darkness, only semi- because the same cadet had left a trail of lights. If he'd had more time, Jedao would have brought his own light source. But he had gambled correctly that he could rely on the live-action roleplayers to do the job for him.

Jedao had only partly been telling the truth to Yeren when he said he wanted to _avoid_ the roleplayers. In point of fact, he was going to rely on them to provide cover. He hadn't wanted to state it outright in case someone, somewhere, was listening in. Yeren might be a brilliant hacker, but that didn't mean he was off the hook when it came to taking precautions.

"I'm in," Jedao said to Yeren.

"Got it," she said. "And hurry. They woke up Vidona Iska for this, which means they might not wait until morning to--interrogate Ruo."

Iska was the head of the Vidona office. Definitely not a good sign if she was involved. What _had_ Ruo done to land himself in hot water?

Jedao ghosted down the sewers--he'd learned the trick of moving near-silently in water as a kid running around the swamps near home--until he heard the sounds of intrigue. Specifically, a feud between House Icedrake and House Wolfhound in the ongoing machinations of the game. The last time Jedao had checked in, Icedrake's mistress was trying to assassinate the heir to Wolfhound at the same time that she was seducing them. It was very complicated, and almost as good as the torrid historical romances that his mother had loved to read.

Jedao tracked a player who had made the mistake of getting separated from the others. Snuck up behind them. Clapped a hand over their nose and mouth until they sagged unconscious, and removed the House Wolfhound badge for his own use. After a moment's thought, he also relieved them of their sparkly red d20. He stashed the limp figure on a safe, more-or-less dry ledge, and continued.

Jedao happened to know, because he paid attention to small details, that the commandant's beloved niece, herself a senior cadet, was a player. Thus the commandant allowed the game to continue, even arranging for gaps in campus security for the players' benefit. He wasn't going to pass as one of them on close inspection, but even a moment's confusion would work to his advantage.

"How's Ruo?" Jedao asked.

"He's drugged or something," Yeren said. "Woke up, but he's mumbling nonsense. I can't get a close enough look to check for other symptoms."

Hmm. "Is there an antagonist on-site?"

She told him the location of Cloister Three's pharmacist. Each Cloister had a pharmacy for Vidona reasons that Jedao didn't want to think too closely about.

"I'm going topside," Jedao said. "Another blackout, please."

"Thirty seconds from--mark."

Not long afterward, Jedao emerged from the sewers, somewhat stinkier for wear. Much nicer than a swamp, though, and less chance of running into gators.

He eyed Cloister Three, a depressing building in the Brutalist style. The windows were too narrow for him to fit through, and he didn't have the tools that he'd have needed to remove the grilles anyhow. Too bad this campus had been designed by paranoid people like him. Entering from the extremely narrow drains wasn't a possibility either, unless he suddenly turned into an octopus.

"You have a plan, right?" asked Yeren, who was undoubtedly thinking the same thing.

"I sure do," Jedao replied. He fastened the Wolfhound badge on his shirt, then marched right up to the front door where a bored-looking guard was stationed.

Yeren had the sense not to yelp a protest in his ear, which would have been distracting. Besides, she knew him well enough to realize that while he specialized in hair-raising stunts, he was good at getting out of them intact.

The guard was a young man with a distressingly handsome, symmetrical face and a marked tendency to overuse hair gel. He reeked as much of expensive cologne as Jedao did of sewer. Scowling, he slitted his eyes at Jedao. "Are you one of those roleplaying nerds? Get lost."

Jedao widened his eyes and whined, "I was in here earlier today and I left my lucky dice. I _really_ need my lucky dice for tonight's assassination." He had perfected that whine by practicing on Ruo and Yeren. Over the transceiver, he could hear Yeren choking back a laugh.

"You wha--ARGH!"

The guard, made complacent by what was widely regarded as an uneventful, cushy posting, had failed to react as Jedao used his complaint to close the distance. Jedao hugged him and said, in his best I'm-stoned-out-of-my-mind voice, "I'm so glad there are caring people like you in a place like this!"

"Eww! Argh! Augh! Get off me, you lunatic!"

Jedao staggered away, grinning like the idiot he was pretending to be, and made it around the corner, still clutching his case of tools--and one thing more.

"Yes, blackout, I'm on it," Yeren said, anticipating him. "I am doing on-the-fly video editing and video generation like you wouldn't believe. I should start making music vids of your firearms instructor doing the conga."

"Don't tempt me," Jedao muttered.

"I presume you have what you came for."

Jedao turned his hand palm-up, although he had no idea if she could see him through whatever cameras she was currently controlling. He'd made off with the guard's keycard ID. "If I get to a reader, can you jinx the credentials on this card and rearrange the holo to resemble me?"

"There's a card reader at the kiosk thirty meters back--you know the one. Wait six minutes; there's someone withdrawing cash right now."

"Glad you're looking out for me," Jedao said.

"Only because you're my second-favorite boyfriend with trash taste in porn," Yeren said.

"Excellent," Jedao said. "Can you make me a plumber?" Jedao knew that the plumbing in all the older buildings was atrocious. It was guaranteed that there would be a plumbing emergency at any given hour. Even if not, it was at least plausible that someone would call a plumber out of an abundance of caution.

Seven minutes later, Jedao had a counterfeit ID with a picture that resembled him on the days that he got to comb his bangs. He tucked the Wolfhound badge away in his pocket for later use. "Toilet overflow," Jedao told the guard at the side entrance, who was grimacing at Jedao's eau de sewer. He presented his case of tools for the scanner. "Gotta deal with the plumbing. You gonna let me in or...?"

"In, in," Guard #2 said, waving a hand in front of their nose. They only cursorily scanned the case. The scanner beeped to indicate that there was nothing out of the ordinary in it.

"You're taking a shower before the next time you kiss me, right?" Yeren asked dryly as the door closed behind Jedao.

"Didn't know you could _smell_ through a video," Jedao quipped.

"You have a guard about to round the corner down the hall," Yeren said, brisk once more. "That corridor on the right should be safe."

Jedao hoofed it. He flattened himself against the wall once he'd reached safety, sidling farther down the corridor as the shadow of Guard #3 cut across his feet. After the hunting trips he'd gone on with his mother, he knew that even if the hostiles couldn't _see_ him, it was a problem if his _odor_ gave him away. Fortunately, the circulation system in Academy buildings was far more predictable than the wind outside. He'd always wondered if the architects had realized that this was an exploitable weakness by anyone who had grown up rambling about the wilderness.

"Clear," Yeren said a moment later. "Go back down that hall where the guard came from, hang a left, three doors down and that'll take you to the pharmacy."

"Thanks," Jedao said.

"I assume you have a plan for getting by the pharmacist."

Jedao grinned. "Don't I always?"

The pharmacist was less than impressed to find a plumber at her office. She only made the most cursory inspection of Jedao's ID. "Shouldn't you be fixing the toilet upstairs?" she demanded. "I can smell it from here."

"Sorry to bother you, ma'am," Jedao slurred, because that was the best way he could think of to disguise his drawl, "but I wasn't expecting to be called out at this hour and I was, uh, indulging. I need a dose of kemeseril to sober me up."

" _Ugh_ ," the pharmacist said. "I don't know why people like you can't keep your own supply of the stuff on hand."

"And," Jedao lowered his voice, "could this be between you and me? I'm already in hot water with the supervisor, and..."

Her nose wrinkled as her distaste deepened, but she handed over the pill, which Jedao palmed and pretended to dry-swallow.

The pharmacist rolled her eyes. "You're lucky I don't just report you."

"I'll do a good job, ma'am," Jedao promised. "You're the best!" He leaned in close with a goofy smile. Just as he'd planned, the pharmacist recoiled, which gave him the opportunity to hightail it out of there. He had to make sure not to make his gait _too_ coordinated or she'd suspect he really wasn't high.

Honestly, any Shuos pharmacist should have known he was scamming her. She probably did know and had stopped caring years ago. Hell, for all he knew she was skimming meds from the stockpile to sell to people like him for extra cash, and the only thing that had stopped her from demanding payment was the extremely useful essence of sewer.

"Guard coming from the side," Yeren's voice said, bringing him back to the present.

With her aid, he dodged the rest of the patrols--minimal at this hour, even at Cloister Three. The Vidona considered Shuos Academy Prime a hardship assignment. It hardly attracted their best and brightest. Not something they wanted to admit, but handy for those in the know. He ditched the case of tools in another janitor's closet on the way. Someone could enjoy the backup set.

Jedao made it to the stairwell and descended into a harshly-lit corridor and its dismal row of cells. The whole place reeked of disinfectant, which was impressive considering that his sense of smell had given up and gone on vacation. _Weak,_ he thought; Mom, who had the world's strongest stomach for random effluvia, would never have let him hear the end of it.

"Cell Four," Yeren said.

He glanced both ways just in case, although he knew Yeren would have warned him they were in any danger of discovery. Then he opened the door with the keycard, slipped in, and toed the door shut after himself.

Ruo was slouched against the wall. They hadn't even bothered putting him in restraints. "Ruo," Jedao said, sotto voce.

Ruo's eyes wouldn't focus. "Jedao, is that really you?" Slurred voice: definitely drugs, maybe other damage.

Jedao did a quick check for broken bones and ruptures, and didn't find any. "Can you get up?"

Ruo staggered upright, then sank back against the wall. "Not s'much."

Just then, Jedao heard Yeren hiss a curse. "Guard incoming," she said, and: "You're on your own."

Someone must have noticed her activity. Well, no problem: it would have been better to do this with Yeren's help, but he could manage without. Jedao considered his options, then dragged Ruo into an embrace.

"You stink--" Ruo began to say.

 _You only now noticed?_ Jedao thought. As if he hadn't already known that Ruo wasn't all there at the moment.

"Come on," Jedao mouthed into Ruo's ear, despite the other man's squirming. "The smell won't kill you." He pulled off Ruo's jacket and crouched behind him, strategically draping the folds of cloth to conceal himself.

Footsteps approached the cell, began to move away...slowed to a halt.

Jedao thought. _So much for improvisational measures._ He came up to a squat, weight balanced over his toes, ready for action.

Guard #4 (or was it #5, or #6? Counting was not Jedao's strong suit) opened the door, muttering, "What the hell is--"

#4 never got a chance to finish their sentence. Jedao sprang up and struck the side of their neck. #4 dropped. Jedao caught them and dragged them inside the cell.

"C'mon," Jedao crooned, urging Ruo up and offering him the pill he'd obtained earlier. "This will make you feel better."

"Don'wanna," Ruo grumbled, "drugs are bad for you."

This was blatantly hypocritical, considering the number of recreational substances that Ruo had introduced Jedao to in the past semester. Jedao sighed and shoved the pill into Ruo's mouth. "Swallow that and it'll make you feel better," he promised, which was mostly true. He didn't know offhand if Ruo was one of the people who suffered nausea or a dry mouth as a reaction to kemeseril, but extracing Ruo was the first priority, so his friend was just going to have to deal.

One more thing. He had to provide an explanation for Ruo's escape. He fished out the Wolfhound badge and dropped it along with the d20 he'd taken off the unfortunate gamer. That should confuse the issue enough to help Yeren fuck up the records.

It wouldn't be long before someone noticed that the guard was missing, if they hadn't already. Jedao half-bullied, half-coaxed Ruo to the stairs. Too bad kemeseril didn't take effect immediately; he estimated another ten minutes before it started to work, and then Ruo would need a visit to the nearest restroom so his system could flush out whatever he'd been dosed with.

Left, or right? Jedao remembered the layout of most of the ground floor, and could extrapolate the rest from Cloister Three's external features. The architect hadn't been particularly devious, and by now all the layouts of the campus buildings were an open secret to any cadet who had the sense to do a little digging. The question was, which route would allow him to get out of here without running into Guard #5? (#6? Never mind; not important.)

Jedao picked left more or less at random, then had to backtrack, dragging a recalcitrant Ruo with him, when footsteps approached from _that_ hall. It was difficult to maneuver when he sometimes had to clamp a hand over Ruo's mouth because his friend kept trying to make witty cracks about the decor (dismal, institutional, featuring many propaganda posters in vile red). And then Ruo tried to _bite_ him, which would have been hot under other circumstances but was distracting at a time when he was trying to rescue them both from being strung up as heretics.

At last they reached the side entrance. "I'm a shitty no-good incompetent plumber and you're escorting me out, got it?" Jedao hissed at Ruo until Ruo nodded agreement.

"What the hell?" Guard #2 said when Ruo frog-marched Jedao out the door. "Done already? Let me see your ID again."

Ruo had regained enough wits to seize the initiative. "Look at this!" he exclaimed, his voice marginally less slurred than it had been earlier. He grabbed Jedao's ID and waved it under Guard #2's nose. "Why in the name of fox and hound is Administration giving losers like _this_ "--he kicked Jedao in the shin, which would also have been a turn-on under less dire circumstances, why did his goddamn _shin_ have to be one of his erogenous zones--"licenses to practice plumbing? I caught this loser tearing up the floor and trying to force a stuck shutoff valve and--"

"Okay, okay," Guard #2 said, having determined that Jedao's face approximately matched the ID being waved in their face. "Get him out of here and send for a different plumber while you're at it."

"Damn straight I'm going to do so," Ruo said, and continued the harangue for a full seven minutes until they were out of earshot.

"Thanks so much," Jedao said, limping. The two of them leaned against each other as they made their way back to Yeren's dorm by mutual silent agreement.

"You're welcome," Ruo replied. "Uh, I hope you have a plan for--"

Jedao heard a telltale crackling in his ear. "Hush," he said.

Miraculously, Ruo quieted.

"There you are," Yeren's voice said.

"Target acquired," Jedao said, as if she didn't already know.

He could practically hear Yeren rolling her eyes. "Nicely done, and I don't want to know the details," she said. "You'll be pleased to know that I pinned the whole escapade on a session of live-action Castles & Conspiracies gone awry."

Jedao was immediately concerned, although not so distracted that he missed the pedestrians approaching them. He nudged Ruo onto a side path through a grove of bamboo that hadn't been tamed since the planet was terraformed. "No one's going to take the fall for whatever the hell Ruo did?" he asked Yeren.

"I doctored the records and introduced some mild hallucinogens into the building's central air," Yeren replied. "You'd think the Vidona would have really great orgies in Cloister Three instead of bothering innocent folk. It'll be a fox-up of massive proportions. They'll be months figuring out what happened."

Ruo started to say something that sounded suspiciously like "I'm not exactly innocent." Jedao jabbed him in the ribs and he subsided.

"Also," Yeren added, "you _are_ taking that shower, right?" There was more than a hint of a threat in her voice.

"We could take one together," Jedao proposed.

Brief pause. "At this hour?"

"It's not like we're the first cadets to need to clean up after getting falling-down drunk or drenched in edible slime or some other prank," Jedao said. "C'mon, Yeren. Your two favorite boyfriends. A hot shower. You won't be able to resist us."

"I wish I could hear her side of the conversation," Ruo complained at the moment that Yeren retorted, "You're also my two _least_ favorite boyfriends."

"That's a yes," Jedao interpreted as Yeren's dorm and its draperies of parasitic ivy came into view.

Sure, the heptarchate was rotten and the Vidona were thugs and the whole regime needed to be ripped apart and rebuilt from the ashes, but one thing at a time. He'd rescued Ruo. That was what mattered tonight. He planned on a life-affirming romp with Ruo and Yeren in the shower, and maybe regaining his sense of smell in the process. Tomorrow would be soon enough to talk them into joining him in revolution.

**Author's Note:**

> I may have been channeling "Extracurricular Activities" energy.
> 
> Happy Yuletide!


End file.
